UN’s new Afghan envoy heartened by talk of peace

Jan Kubis, the new special representative of the UN Secretary-General, said that he thinks the Afghan people are tired of the 10-year war and are interested in supporting steps that would bring more stability and eventually peace to Afghanistan.

“Political forces are discussing it. The parliament is discussing it. Civil society is discussing it at all levels — not only at the top level, but in the provinces,” said Kubis, who arrived in Afghanistan about a week ago and has been meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other top Afghan and international officials. “People are trying to understand what can we do to support this.”

The U.S. has engaged in secret talks with Taliban figures, and the Afghan government and other regional players have also opened lines of communication with the insurgency as a way to find a political resolution to the war.

Kubis said that no major, relevant party can be excluded from the discussion.

He cautioned that the country was still dangerous.

“It’s obvious to everyone that the security situation is still volatile,” Kubis said. “Unfortunately, suicide and terrorist attacks are a part of the life here. What is tragic and sad is that unfortunately, suicide attacks are targeting, indiscriminately, civilians, including children and women.

Kubis succeeds Staffan de Mistura, who headed the United National Assistance Mission in Afghanistan from March 2010 to December 2011. Prior to taking up his new position, Kubis was executive secretary of the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe.

He said his priorities were to link security and development, promote reconciliation and work on issues related to governance, human rights, election and legal reforms.

Kubis arrives as international development assistance is declining and foreign combat forces have started to withdraw — a gradual process that is to be completed by the end of 2014.

Some countries, including France, are under domestic political pressure to pull out of the unpopular war early.

France halted its training programs for the Afghan military and threatened to withdraw its forces earlier than planned after an Afghan soldier shot and killed four French troops last week in eastern Afghanistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is expected to visit France on Friday and meet with President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Afghan Defense Ministry Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said Wednesday that an investigation is ongoing into the attack on the French. He would not confirm speculation that the attack was motivated by a video purporting to show U.S. Marines desecrating Taliban insurgents’ bodies, or for some other reason.

He said the Afghan soldier, who is in custody, is 21 years old and had been in the Afghan National Army less than three months.

“Our initial investigation is not completely clear,” Azimi said.

The 39-second video, which showed what appeared to be Marines urinating on the corpses of Afghans, drew immediate condemnation from all sides when it surfaced on YouTube earlier this month.

The attack was latest of several by an Afghan soldier on international troops working with the national army. There have been more than a dozen such turncoat attacks in two years, although the U.S.-led coalition says they are isolated incidents that do not point to a wider trend nor to organized Taliban infiltration.

The U.S. military promised to investigate and punish those involved, but the video’s wide distribution has threatened to sour relations between Afghans and the international troops working to train the national army to take over security by the end of 2014.

French investigators are traveling to Afghanistan to assist in investigating the attack.

The NATO force in Afghanistan said one of the coalition’s service members was killed by a roadside bomb on Wednesday in the country’s volatile south. The statement gave no further details, including the nationality of the service member.